Benefit

Technology Description

Aptamers are synthetic oligonucleotides with significant potential in diagnostics, therapeutics, targeted drug delivery, and biosensing applications. Despite advances in SELEX-based aptamer discovery, identifying candidates with strong target specificity and minimal off-target binding remains a major bottleneck. Current approaches commonly rely on next generation sequencing (NGS) analysis of sequence enrichment; however, enrichment can occur independently of target binding, resulting in lengthy and costly screening efforts to validate lead candidates.

Inventors at the University of Iowa have developed a novel platform that addresses industry challenges by combining cross-target binding (CTB) assays with NGS (CTB-NGS process) to directly evaluate aptamer specificity against both target and non-target antigens. Utilizing an internal reference standard for data normalization, the technology enables accurate calculation of target-to-non-target specificity and has demonstrated improved identification of high-performing aptamer candidates compared to traditional selection-round sequencing analysis. Applicable across a broad range of aptamer discovery programs, CTB-NGS has the potential to reduce screening costs, improve lead selection, accelerate development timelines, and enhance the commercial success of aptamer-based products.

UIRF Case No. 2025-003

Stage of Development

The CTB-NGS process has been tested successfully with two independent SELEX processes, one cell-based SELEX process for human vascular smooth muscle cell aptamers and a second in vivo SELEX process for aptamers that target the heart.